Is good lyrics not important for a hit number?Is good lyrics not important for a hit number?

Topic started by shwetha (@ 219.65.119.106) on Sat Jan 11 23:35:37 EST 2003.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Don;t u think lyricists these days seem to have run out of ideas..? There are very few songs with nice and meaningful lyrics. Iam talking about songs other than "gaanas" here. Like for eg. 'Azhage Azhagu Devadai' (Raja Paarvai) and 'Pineapple vannathodu, red apple kannathodu' (Samudhram), both songs describe how beautiful the heroine is. But somehow the former seems to do a better job of it. There are songs of recent times that have good lyrics too. Anjali^2 (Duet), Narumugaye^2 (Iruvar), Kannamoochi enadaa (K^4), Kannathil muthamittal (KM) to name a few. But i feel the proportion has greatly reduced. Even if the songs have great music and all that, lyrics takes a beating. Vaseegara, i feel is one of such songs. This makes it seem like good lyrics is not a criterion for a song to be a hit number. Is it because lyricists these days lack the standard and expertise that lyricists of yester years had... or is it because people s tastes have changed...or is it because the kind of tunes being composed are not just suitable for any good lyrics?

Responses:

From: Prabhu (@ 203.94.235.232)
on: Sun Jan 12 04:08:56 EST 2003
"Is it because lyricists these days lack the standard and expertise that lyricists of yester years had... "

About bad lyrics or crazy tunes, the basic thing is creativity, whether you are skilled enough to churn out new instances of your art. When you run out of creativity, you are forced to try and make something weird and out-of-the-ordinary and it becomes a fad.

You can apply that this to any area, be it writing lyrics, or composing tunes or even comedy sequences.

A class artist like Kannadasan never suffered from 'writer's block' - he had immense sense of expression, never had to import words and phrases all through his career. Same for tunes, you'd rarely find MSV/IR deviating from the classical even today. They knew their art too well to change their style. And a truly creative guy has tremendous productivity. Take comedy for instance, what makes Nagesh/Senthil/Vadivelu different from Vivek? The former's sense of humour is spontaneous and comes naturally from within. One thing about Nagesh's comedies they are timeless, you can watch any old comedy and not get bored. Vivek's style is heavily dependent on passing trends - most of his jokes/comments are satires on current way of life.

You wont see a KD/MSV/IR go out of stock. So when you find obnoxious tunes/lyrics in place, it basically means only one thing - artists are lacking in 'sarakku'.

From: dev (@ 64.172.180.169)
on: Wed Jan 15 20:38:57 EST 2003
nagesh's comedies are "timeless"? vivek's comedies are about the social satires of the present? that makes nagesh a better comedian than vivek?

well, i guess then in your opinion, such writers as jules verne, thomas paine, mark twain, john steinbeck, anne frank, even, are just not very good writers because quite often they talked about the events of their day and didn't write "timeless" stuff. come off the high horse, prabhu.

about why are lyrics worse today than before? because nobody cares about the lyrics anymore. people listen to songs -- and often like songs more -- which have inane ridiculous lyrics. so why write good ones? face it; which song is a bigger hit: "narumugaiyae" from iruvar, or "sarakku vachirukkaen" from shah jahan? so lyricists change their styles deliberately (a sad fact), but THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY HAVE LESS TALENT THAN THEIR FOREBEARS.

people who care about the lyrics in songs are unfortunately a very small minority.

From: dev (@ 64.172.180.169)
on: Wed Jan 15 20:41:46 EST 2003
and Youth-guy, I do credit ARR for writing music for several songs with great lyrics -- there are lots of examples. but he also did music for movies like "ratchagan" (Chandiranai thottathu yaar Armstrong-aa? Illa naan strong-aa?). Understand that ARR is only a music director and is not a lyricist; I'm not going to give him credit for the lyrics.

Many other music directors have also written music for songs with great lyrics.

From: Prabhu (@ 61.11.13.198)
on: Thu Jan 16 09:26:30 EST 2003
dev, what I was basically referring to was the style. Senthil/Vadivelu/Nagesh depended less on catchy phrases and smarta$$ remarks like Vivek. Their dialogues are simple, down to earth without being too overdone. Their actions too are funny.

Vivek tries to be too sophisticated, mostly thematic - organised comedy if we may call it.

Look at RK Narayan's style of description - free-flowing and devoid of the frills.

From: Youth (@ 203.106.140.190)
on: Thu Jan 16 12:09:44 EST 2003
dev

MD's hold a huge responsibility on the lyrics.
Maybe you are new to this.

For your info, ARR has mentioned that he wants to bring back the good lyrics of the 60s and is working very hard towards it.
Of course he has his share of dud lyrics too, but the good outweight the bad.

Ratchagan had some songs with amazing lyircs..like the above one,"kaiyyil midhakkum kanavaa ne", "nenje nenje" and few more...
ofcourse it had songs like Luckky luckky with mediocre lyrics...but still as mediocre as you call a cherri language, which you find in most of the other recent songs.

From: Kupps (@ 156.153.255.134)
on: Mon Jan 20 07:00:32 EST 2003
good lyric is important for the longevity (and thoosi thatti kaetufying) of a hit song. It is also here the importance of being more melodious is stressed. Hence, IMHO, a good lyrical content melodious hit song can withstand ages.

but "mala mala", "paeta rap", "podangO" lyrics would do for a song to be a hit in this fast food world.